HORIZON

A wide, white, November horizon,

like sheets hung out to dry,

curled up as it touched the sea,

edges fuzzed with salt.

And at that joining, that fringe

of yellows and greens, my life

pulled away from everything

and caught sharply,

reeking of emptiness

ODE TO MY MOTHER

Mummy got hi today

soared Prozac-ed across the sky

her eyes small as nailheads

glaring down shadowed and silver

a Model Mother all at once

scattered light/dark bright/dull

beautiful in robes of red and gold

but complex as another tongue

THE RETURN

You are the Ruth of my dreams

(long tressed amid the corn)

beginning the seven seas from this

Giotto window. Stiff at your arm

I can at last taste the years

and the sun of ecstatic black

that fills the room like incense.

I have tried so many times to

step back into yesterday and disappear,

a spider on the network of

poetry. And Lady Midnight,

I have bent my head to the ground

and wept for you in your absence,

this poem like a tomb, remembering

Helen waving, tears in her eyes...

HASTINGS

FOR A.G.

This surf breathes time and

light; it hisses, empty, at

nothing, smelling of bleak

night roads and the English

grey of a dying poinsettia.

The beach ends like a poem,

with rocks, with birds, with

music from a restaurant. 1

squint from thinned midsummer

sand to imagined islands and

Cortez stands, exalted, upon the

rocks of a New World.

RED FOR M.T.M.

Sometimes he was an Odysseus, a

leader, respected by men, sometimes a

holy man living in panels of moonlight

and wearing his soul like a big jacket.

Sometimes he was an acorn fanning

into an oak and sometimes he

painted the world in his own colours

of Indian fields and the cold current

of a wild, marble stream.

MINIATURE

FOR .R.H.

From a Putney skylight the day

drones on. tracing the horizon's

axis with a crescent of chimney stacks

Here the world is unrestricted,

open and seamless, a vault to which

the sun has lent her light as

London quivers, cupped in my

raised palms like a paper lantern.

THE ACCUSED

In the street below

a crowd is gathering,

faces stippled with colour,

an impressionist haze.

Do you see them?

Lips raw as the sky's razor?

Eyes lurid, precise?

Hatred is written in sweat

across their foreheads.

An hour later, they are impassive, and

my fear has

ripened to rumourous light -

it waits, a separate being,

peeled and silent,

ready to begin again

at a single glance.

they will wait for me,

till I come.

COLETTE'S POEM

Fields prickling with anger.

A knife twisted in the heart

of the mainland. Rain.

Jodie, waking, the tears streaming

salty from her eyes, tears like

the stars of her history and

the angels kneeling, their feet

knuckled hard as stone.

She spoke, but her voice was

a whisper and the words caught,

stifling, drawn by their own pain.

George turned, the sobs clenching

in the harbour of his smile:

Jodie had not moved. She

sat with the sun behind her,

shadows for this world, shadows

for the tears freckling her face and

bleeding ruby across full cheeks, the

thoughts that rise like smoke, her body

growing long towards noon, shadows

nuzzling against her heart.

 THAT WAS NEW YORK

The stars are glued on the ceiling;

they don't have to move out

on to the verandah and vanish

as I do, for they live in shadow now

and one has just dropped into my hand,

the bones streaming from its eyes.

The sea creeps forward, pulled by the

departing moon. All is silvery.

NATURE POEM

little brown moth

of stuttered moonlight

you're a Genius all the time

hairy wings trembling jazz

willow twig legs bowed

into shade into air into sultra

the forest's copyright

caught on a violin string

shiny harbouring silk

you meet God crunched

between a fat spider's jowls

the glory of fluting wind

and wings unfolded dear

in my brain

your baby face is opened

sweet bud from chrysalis

asking me why

branches lift a lime stretched

where you want to be

and black incarnate

shrouded about with thread

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